Strengthening Oversight of National Intelligence Community Bill 2025

Submission Date: 1 October 2025

The Law Council of Australia welcomes this opportunity to provide a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review of the Strengthening Oversight of the National Intelligence Community Bill 2025 (Cth) (the Bill). The Law Council broadly supports this Bill. However, the Bill does raise concerns in certain areas.

We make the following recommendations to improve the operation of the Bill:

• The PJCIS should seek an assurance that the IGIS will have capacity and resourcing to effectively fulfil its additional oversight responsibilities, in particular its oversight of AUSTRAC noting the expansion of AUSTRAC’s functions as a result of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024 (Cth).
• The Bill should be amended to provide a definition of the intelligence function for the Department of Home Affairs in the principal legislation under proposed subsection 3A(4) of the IGIS Act. If necessary, a regular review provision could be added to ensure that the definition remains fit for purpose by reference to the evolving functions of the Department of Home Affairs.
• If the Committee decides that delegated legislation is appropriate, then the Law Council proposes that additional guardrails need to be included in the primary legislation. These should include:
  • listing any legislated intelligence functions of the Department of Home Affairs in the primary legislation; and
  • for any remaining functions, amending subsection 3A(4) of the IGIS Act to expressly require that delegated legislation must specify a definition of an intelligence function of the Department of Home Affairs, rather than list organisational units within the Department.
• Proposed subsection 22A(3) should require consultation with the intelligence agency under inquiry, but remove the requirement for agreement.
• The Explanatory Memorandum entry for Item 28 of Schedule 1 at paragraph 130 should be amended to refer to Item 59 of Schedule 1 (rather than Item 57).
• Item 127 of Schedule 1 Part 2 should be removed from the Bill. • The ability to specify additional classes of persons able to rely on immunities through legislative instrument should be removed.
• The ability to delegate such classification should also be removed.
• The long title of the Bill should be amended from ‘… and related purposes’ to ‘… and other purposes’ to properly encompass the proposals contained in Schedule 3.
• The Australian Government should, as a matter of good practice, commit to responding to a formal report of the INSLM within twelve months of the report being tabled in Parliament.

Last Updated on 10/10/2025

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